The Strange Life and Times of HAARP

Some people think it’s a death beam. Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens thought it could send energy to Earth, solving the energy crisis. John McCain thought it was a pork project extraordinaire. In a Tom Clancy novel, it shows up as a mind control weapon used against the Chinese. Naturally, I’m talking about High Frequency Auroral Research Program in Alaska.

HAARP really is the Moby Dick of conspiracy theories. More problematic, however, is the conspiracy theories have overshadowed the benefits HAARP may provide to the scientific community (and also confuses debates about the current military interest in HAARP, to study ways to counter the effects of High Altitude Nuclear Detonations).

It’s a Strangelovian scenario that only the Pentagon could dream up: North Korea, in the throes of a military coup, launches a nuclear weapon that explodes 120 kilometres above the Earth. The blast fills the atmosphere with ‘killer’ electrons that would within days knock out the electronics of all satellites in low-Earth orbit. It would cause hundreds of billions of dollars of damage, and affect military, civilian and commercial space assets.

If this doomsday scenario sounds outlandish, then the possible response may sound even more improbable: injecting radio waves into the atmosphere to force these energetic electrons out of orbit. Yet this is exactly what the US Department of Defense is looking at in a major ionospheric research facility in Alaska.

In reality, HAARP embodies many of the struggles of Pentagon-supported science and technology. The Pentagon wants weapons, and things that support or defend against weapons, and the scientific community wants science. That’s led to greatest irony of HAARP: as the subject of every conspiracy theory out there, the military has had to repeatedly emphasize that it is a research facility that will advance science. Yet to sustain Pentagon interest and survive congressional cuts, it has to demonstrate military relevance.

The conspiracies around HAARP are perhaps, in part, a result of that tension.

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